Using the Shim

This chapter introduces the reader to the shim command set, and documents
the format of the events that result. It includes both introductory sections
for the new user as well as detailed explanations and tables for the
downstream script programmer.

Recall from Chapter 1 that shim and api protocol language
statements are referred to collectively as events, and these events are
partitioned into the four categories of: commands, from the downstream
to the shim; requests, from the shim to the IB tws; messages, from
the tws to the shim; and comments, generated internally by the shim and
sent downstream.
The command language is explained in § 4.1, while the
related requests and resulting messages, collectively api protocol events,
are covered in § 4.2.
The new user will probably want to treat the command set as an introduction
to the api protocol, and read selectively in § 4.1,
leaving the details of § 4.2 for later, while the
downstream programmer should expect to cover all of
§ 4.1 and
§ 4.2.